


True Believers

by SylverLining



Category: The Lone Gunmen (TV), The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Byers really needs to let himself Express An Emotion, Hurt/Comfort, Langly is so much more Emotion than anyone acknowledges, M/M, Near Death, OT3, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, and Frohike needs a drink, emotion vomit, huevos rancheros, like goddamn that Come On Frohike is gonna HAUNT ME and probably Frohike too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-08 10:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18893104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylverLining/pseuds/SylverLining
Summary: It was a hell of a beginning, but it almost ended right away. The events and after-events/fallout/coping/relapses/recovery/love of the traumatic (and creepily 9/11-predicting) LGM pilot episode, multi-chapter, multi-POV, most likely ranging to just after Episode 2. Everything just happens so MUCH.





	1. Nothing To Tell

**Author's Note:**

> The result of physical and emotional compromization reaching critical mass, written with any em-dash that wanted to play, and the (patently obvious, really) assumption that the Gunmen are in a committed polyamorous relationship, and giving zero fucks. I’d invite you to give the same amount, but if you do, please note that none will be given in return.
> 
> Also, Happy Birthday Eri. <3

Langly never stops talking, except for the nine hours between Takoma Park and Boston, which is fine with Frohike for one reason—less distraction on an unfamiliar route, at night, with a questionably old and faded map and enough adrenaline flooding his system to be the envy of any long-haul trucker out of uppers—and worrying as fuck for every other reason.

Frohike hadn’t been there for the very worst of it, Langly alone sweating (and probably crying) bullets while Byers spoke into the plane phone in his usual, much-too-calm voice it hurt to listen to—was it just that Byers knew getting Langly even more anxious and terrified would raise his and a thousand other peoples’ chances of death? Did he want the last thing Langly heard from him to be love, not fear? Would Byers ever let himself show fear for himself, a thousandth of the panic Frohike felt taking ten years off his life as he gave up on kicking the exhausted, empty-tanked van into cooperation, and full-out ran down the block to the arcade?

He wasn’t there, but leaving Langly there hurt almost as much as staying. Almost as much as leaving the phone, having no idea if their countdown was correct, or if he’d be too late getting back, and if the last thing Byers had said—God, what had he said? Something both responsible and infuriating, probably—was the last time Frohike would ever hear his voice.

He shouldn’t have had to fucking blackmail Yves into helping; she should have just helped when he told her someone he loved and a lot of others he was trying not to think about, were about to die. Some small part of him (the part that recognized her kiss) wanted to believe she would’ve helped anyway, when she was sure it couldn’t be traced back to her actually giving a shit. But she helped, and Frohike didn’t quite run home—too old for two-way sprints, but not in the way he’s too old for some of the more adventurous shit that piques Langly’s curiosity—but he might have power-walked.

He feels like both an idiot and a terrible person when he gets home and meets the door to which he forgot the key in his race to find Yves—like he almost forgot his own name, or that anything exists besides a flying fucking metal coffin with Byers on it, and an almost-smoking computer with Langly begging it for mercy in the way he never should, in the worst voice he’s ever heard come out of that pretty face—and realizes Langly has to buzz him in.

It’s five buzzes and seven or eight yelled apologies and reassurances—though there’s no way Langly can hear him, not with the soundproofing they debated for a hour to spring for—before the door buzzes open and Frohike steps through, arms already out to catch Langly as he falls in like he’s tripped over the shoelaces of his battered Converse that Frohike’s threatened to snip before something really unfortunate happened.

Something really unfortunate did almost happen. So close he can feel the nightmare coming a mile away.

And something really unfortunate did happen here because the sounds coming out of Langly’s mouth now are even worse than Byers’ damnable calm in the face of death, or even Langly’s pleas and empty threats to a machine about to cost him the life he’s made here with them, along with Byers’. There are no words, just inarticulate howls, throat-burning wails and tremors so awful it feels like he’s having a seizure in Frohike’s arms instead of too-convincingly faking one, and Frohike doesn’t know if he’s even saying any words at all himself, as he lowers both of them to the ground and gathers up Langly’s too-damn-long limbs into a fetal curl as much as he can, leaning against the metal door and its twelve locks that keeps out the world, and holding Langly so tightly against his chest it hurts (Langly’s shoulders are sharp, and he’s pressing in so close too it almost knocks the wind out of Frohike), and those are definitely Langly’s tears and snot and spit (the boy’s a messy crier, but this could all be so much messier) on his shirt, but Frohike can’t even blame the wetness on his own face on a leak or Langly (as if he’ll ever, ever, ever blame him for anything that happened or might have happened today), or the lurching of his stomach on questionable huevos racheros. He might blame Langly for that, but it was Frohike’s own fool fault, letting him cook.

Sometimes even relief, or the way they arrived at it, kicking and screaming and screeching to a bone-jarring halt, makes him sick.

Now, after the fastest, most haphazard emergency bug-out of their lives, and one blissfully located gas can—Langly is in absolutely no condition to siphon anything but water to stay hydrated; he’s losing enough fluid as it is—and the mobile command unit finally getting its ass in gear, and after the worst of the panic/relief haze has worn off, enough for Frohike to feel somewhat like time and gravity are working right again, Langly is pale and silent, and too still, even with tears still streaming down his face that he’s long past bothering to wipe away—no coffee jitters, no jiggling leg, no nail-biting anxiety or any other tell. For once, maybe in his entire relatively brief but exciting life, he has nothing to say.

That’s fair, Frohike reasons as he merges onto another thankfully empty highway, and keeps pressing the needle further into the red. Until they’re three again instead of two, and Langly’s moving and noisy and annoying and himself again, and Byers is anything he wants to be as long as ‘alive and back in their arms’ is included, there’ll be nothing to tell.


	2. Words, Words, Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Langly finds Byers, and loses his words.
> 
> Absolutely unapologetic, emotional queer mush follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, hello, if you had no trouble accepting the Gunmen are all in love (which, I mean, come on), I’m sure you’ll have equally little trouble accepting that a Twenty-Nineteen Realized Langly is a gender-weird (and also Hella Very Non-Neurotypical) punk who even in 2001 gives negative fucks and likes to feel pretty sometimes, partly to spite the universe, but not always.
> 
> Also, if you think they’re not this huggy/singleminded about finding each other when separated, read the dang X-Files Christmas comic specials.
> 
> Also also, look, guys! My longest and most self-indulgent Yeah Boi/opening sentence EVER!

 

Langly never calls him “John” unless it’s whispered directly in his ear, low and dangerously vulnerable and half-secret, late at night and almost alone where no one can use the feelings Langly pretends he doesn’t have against him, with no blame or judgement; or soft and sharp and urgent to Frohike, who’s busily trying to keep their shitty, shitty van from stalling in the middle of an uncomfortably busy—where the fuck is everyone going at 4 in the morning, honestly—airport dropoff/pickup lane; or shouted at the top of his aching lungs in a strained, cracked voice as he kicks open the door and jumps out of the still-moving van while Frohike protests but doesn’t stop him, and Byers raises his head from where he’s been sitting, possibly for the last nine hours, slumped over with his head in his hands; or sobbed into his uncharacteristically stubbly neck, over and over again as Langly clings to him and breathes him in like he’s an oxygen mask on a nosediving plane, kisses him so hard it hurts, and feels Byers’ arms lock around him too, holding his broken pieces together the way they’re holding each other together, and _their_ only missing piece—Frohike, who’s finally managed to drag the van to an exhaust-coughing, double-parked halt—joining them with open arms and words Langly still can’t understand (no other words exist right now, except for the one he can’t stop saying, nothing in the world but “ _John, John, John_ ”), moments later.

Byers says nothing for the longest time, then he does but not to Langly, though Langly hears him exchanging more words-that-aren’t-John with Frohike, half-releasing him (but holding him that much tighter with his other arm) to pull Frohike close too; clearly the hours and exhaustion and near-death-experience have worn away both his defense-layer inhibitions and his fucks.

By the time words have meaning again, Byers is still holding him, but now at arms’ length, looking him slowly up and down with the most tired, relieved, raw, dark-circled, red-over-blue, sweetest eyes he’s ever seen. Like Langly is the most beautiful thing _he’s_ ever seen.

“You look… nice,” Byers says, quietly, sincerely, with a predictable-but-minor sliver of audible worry as he takes in Langly’s short, tight, plaid skirt and ripped fishnet tights, the black leather collar with its hanging metal ring. They go pretty awesomely with his oldest Ramones shirt, the red one, the one he wears when he needs to feel like the computer god he is. Like the things he wears when he needs to feel how safe he is. Like even if the rest of the world is a loud, overwhelming, dangerous, fascist shithole, he can do or be anything here, even conspicuously pretty, even riskily beautiful, even nice, and be loved.

Langly must be recovering because he almost snarks a _“what, just nice?”_ but he’s still forgotten words in favor of Byers’ face and warm hand resting on Langly’s hip like it’s the most automatic thing, normal in all the ways today hasn’t been. Besides, ‘nice’ is still the best word he knows right now that isn’t ‘John,’ and Langly isn’t up to trying to improve a moment so perfect he almost feels guilty to have it, when so many people came so close to having no moments left at all.

He is up to standing here as he is (as he was, as he wants to be), proving a point to himself and the universe, though whether that’s flipping it the bird in defiance, or thanking every star and government satellite that his world is still turning, he’s not sure. Being the first piece of home Byers sees—maybe the first thing he’s seen at all since he stepped off that plane and his father left him to pick up the pieces after upturning his life, alone in a strange airport with nothing but trauma and the promise that it won’t last forever, Takoma Park is in the same timezone at least—is just a bonus.

 

There’s nothing more punk rock than refusing to die in a world that would love it if you did, and they’ve all done that a thousand times over the years, in their own ways.

 

“So do you,” Langly finally croaks, only a sliver of a lie along with his world of truth. The light green bruise forming on Byers’ cheekbone; he wants to trace it with a fingertip, kiss it away, feel smug when it’s gone and no trace of Bertram remains anywhere in their lives, anywhere at all.

“What’s the occasion?”

Byers is smiling now, tired but so, so _nice_ , sensible worries dropped like heavy luggage as if, like only one word existed to Langly until recently, only two people exist in the world to him.

“You not being dead, you lunkhead,” Langly shoots back immediately, easily, fondly. Just in time, he remembers the world beyond this bubble of safety and rightness. “And about a million other people. Them too.”

“She speaks,” Frohike says, huffing a laugh beside him, relief plain and sharp underneath the teasing words. The first consonant of the pronoun (a safe thing, a just-for-them thing, something that doesn’t always fit, but when it does, feels like the most comfortable shoes, the best-worn shirt of a best-loved band), the one letter that changes everything, makes Langly feel something besides exhaustion and relief: a little thrill of excitement, and a bigger rush of confirmation. Acknowledgement, acceptance, safety, permanence. Choke on that, universe. “There goes peace and quiet.”

Langly shrugs with one shoulder, unconcernedly aware of the other bone-weary travelers stumbling off the red-eye, hopefully too tired to notice the pretty, punk blonde girl embracing the tired boy in the rumpled suit; if anyone does, the pair’s apparent gruff, nonsense-free bodyguard will notice them first.

“And also, so I could do this.”

Langly kisses John again like war is over, or at least this round, and again they need no words.


	3. One Out Of Three Ain’t Bad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byers finally has (too much) time and quiet to think about the night they’ve all been through. And the funeral that kicked it all off. Some feelings (like fathers) just dont want to stay buried. (Also, things continue to be really gay and gratuitously emotional. I have 20 years worth of these emotions to sort through, and I have the time.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I like to drop hints that I really hate Bertram Byers. 
> 
> I think you’ll be able to tell that I really hate Bertram Byers, but just in case it’s not clear, I really hate Bertram Byers.
> 
> Lastly, sincerely, and as always, fuck Bertram Byers.

Byers doesn’t take off his suit, or even his shoes. Once they’re alone together in what has to be the absolute worst motel room he’s ever seen in twelve years of terrible motel rooms (but good company), he doesn’t lie down, even with his knees shaking like he’s a sailor setting foot on land for the first time in a year. Solid ground feels so sweet, and somehow disorienting, like he left part of himself up there, less than a mile up—how high was the World Trade Center’s top floor? He should know this. He does know this. His brain doesn’t want him to know. Sometimes defense mechanisms knew best, and he leaves it alone. Surreal trivia, like the rest of the life he’s somehow still living, will be there when he finds his sea legs again.

It seems like the motel room door has barely closed, when Byers finds his back pressed against it and Frohike pressed against him. He’d done the thinking and the talking at the front desk while Langly and Byers huddled together, keeping each other from falling down from sheer exhaustion with arms around waists and simple existence. He steered them, literally and figuratively, past late-night stragglers, and kept a sensible, determined, painful distance in view of others, right up until the moment that door closed. Now, they’re done self-monitoring, Frohike is done talking, and Byers is done thinking.

He instinctively lowers his head to meet a fast, stubbly, firm and certain, deep and open kiss that tastes like fast food and black coffee and home. Kissing Langly a half hour ago felt like flying, but in a good way. Kissing Frohike, grasping at the side of his face, other hand curling around his suspender, feels like being brought firmly back down to Earth, but in a way that frees him instead of clipping his wings.

The only space between their bodies is filled by Byers’ suit jacket and Frohike’s old, soft leather one. He’s not hard either—in the usual place, anyway. Frohike has more muscle than anybody gives him credit for, and it’s a struggle not to just melt entirely when one of those deceptively strong arms is holding Byers up along with the door, his compact-but-solid, comforting weight, the fairly isolated softness of his round belly reassuring and real. He holds Byers like he’s solely responsible for keeping him from floating away, and kisses him like he can kiss the past twenty-four hours and all the fears and demons and fathers in the world—and weren’t some of those the same things?—out of him too.

When Frohike lets him go and they both breathe again, it’s both the easiest and hardest thing in the world to look over his shoulder, to where Langly sits on the very edge of the only bed, sitting up very straight and tall and still, entirely unlike his usual casual sprawl. He’s staring, not at them, but at a point in the distance, which is only a few feet away thanks to the stained beige wall, and Byers doesn’t need to ask (or want to know, but he does, too well) what he’s seeing. Frohike doesn’t even need to turn to know too; Byers sees the realization out of the corner in his eye. Frohike reads his face and gives his arms one more squeeze before stepping aside to do something with the few bags they’ve dragged in here, and Byers pushes himself off the door and steps toward Langly, suddenly feeling every single mile he’s traveled, and every single way this night could have gone in a way that didn’t result in the three of them in a room together as they should be.

“Hey,” he says quietly, reaching out to touch the edge of Langly’s sharp jaw with the side of his finger, gently tilt his head up in the way he knows will make the breath catch in Langly’s throat, make his adams apple bob and a quick flush rise up into his pale cheeks.

“Hey.” Two out of the three predictions come true, but Langly’s still pale and almost imperceptibly (to anyone outside this room) shaking. His eyes have never looked bigger or bluer behind his thick glasses; he looks questioning, almost looks scared, like he’s about to hear that all of this was an elaborate prank and byers is still in the air and coming down fast.

Byers can’t think of anything to say that hasn’t been breathlessly, disjointedly said. Instead, his hand travels down, caressing Langly’s neck and hair until it reaches the leather collar and its thick metal ring that nestles in the deep notch of his clavicle. Byers hooks one finger around the ring and so carefully, so gently pulls, drawing Langly closer along with a shuddering breath from deep inside him.

He kisses Langly’s forehead this time, and after another soft gasp that goes directly to the pit of Byers’ stomach, the resistance on the ring in his careful grasp increases in the telltale way that means Langly isn’t going to be sitting up too straight and tall for much longer; he’s been held together by pure adrenaline and spite, and more strength than Byers could ask from him or anyone else in a single night, or a lifetime. If anyone deserves to rest, it’s him, and Byers drops the ring and catches him instead. They fall together and hit the bed at the same time, like the first step onto solid ground.

While Byers lies on his side facing Langly, he can feel and hear Frohike moving around them. Sitting down behind Langly, pulling his hair back out of his face, rubbing his knotted shoulder and continuing down, stroking the length of his long body and chasing the tension out, leaving Langly ragdoll-boneless and wrung out like a washcloth long since dry.

Frohike eases off one of Langly’s shoes, then the other. Then his skirt, in a slow motion that any other time would have been playful, teasing, scandalous. Not tonight; they all agree without speaking or needing to. By the time Frohike’s gently removed Langly’s fishnets and even more gently taken off his glasses and put them safely aside, Langly’s more asleep than awake even with his eyes open and still on Byers’ face. Frohike sits back down then, rubbing Langly’s back, kissing the back of his neck while Langly presses his forehead against Byers’, and stares into his eyes until he can’t keep his own open.

Eventually, Byers’ own eyes slip closed too. He doesn’t sleep. Even here in this quiet and blessed solitude (from the rest of the world; as always, they don’t count to each other), he can feel his own pulse racing, hear the blood in his ears over Langly’s quiet, regular breathing. Even lying down with him, every one of Byers’ muscles is tensed until he feels like a poorly-constructed metal frame with a cloth draped over it. Soft and relaxed on the outside, rigid and brittle and easily shaken apart on the inside. He’s felt this more often than he cares to admit, missed the mark of true comfort and joy under the pressure of decorum and white picket fences and everything a good American man is supposed to do and be, and now he has no energy left to do anything but accept the failure.

“You gonna sleep right there, buddy?” It’s soft. ‘Buddy’ is always, always soft and low and just for them.

Byers considers, then shakes his head no with effort, and without opening his eyes.

“How about a shower? The least this dump could do is have decent hot water.”

“No clean clothes,” he mumbles. Insult to injury, really. Staying in this old, sweat-stained suit seems like a fine way to end this long, strange trip.

“I’m three steps ahead of you.” Frohike sounds satisfied, but by the time Byers opens his eyes, he’s turned his back, pulling something out of a suitcase and holding it up like it’s a front-page bombshell.

Byers finds the strength to smile at the clean suit, safely compressed in vacuum-sealed plastic. “You think of everything.”

“Hey, it’s why we’re still alive. Now come on. Wash off some of today’s shitshow and you’ll feel like a new man.”

Or at least a clean one, which is almost as good.

Byers slowly pushes himself up from the bed that threatens to absorb him, tense or not, careful not to jostle Langly out of his fragile, vital sleep, swings his legs over the edge of the bed, and finally takes off his shoes

When he sits up straight again, Frohike is there, making as if to kick Byers’ shoes out of the way, then stopping himself at the last minute, picking them respectfully up, and placing them by the door beside Langly’s Converse. Then he’s back, maneuvering to stand in front of Byers who hasn’t moved an inch, finally making eye contact at a perfectly matched height.

The way Frohike’s standing, between his locked knees, the way he slips Byers’ suit jacket from his shoulders the motions of his fingers as he begins to carefully loosen the elegant half-Windsor that’s somehow, miraculously, remained intact through all of this, would have been something entirely different, on another night, at home. But, like when he’d slipped Langly’s clothes off without a comment or mislaid touch, there’s nothing remotely suggestive at work, even as he unbuttons Byers’ shirt and reaches beneath to touch his bare chest.

He stops there, and for a while Byers does nothing but lean into his hands. No gloves, Byers realizes, just fingers and palms that anyone else would expect to be rough, but have never been anything but measured and deliberate and soft to him.

“You good for the rest?” Frohike asks with a nod to Byers’ belt buckle, and the unspoken promise that, unlike so many other ‘questions’ in Byers’ previous, carefully arranged life, the answer wasn’t an expected and required ‘yes, sir.’

“I’m good,” Byers says, surprised at the rasp in his own voice and unsure if he’s lying. He’s never lied to Frohike before, or Langly, and he’s not spiraling even more out of control, so he must not have started now, he thinks, with only a mild borderline-hysterical laugh he’s too tired to express. “A shower sounds perfect. I’m fine, really,” he says to the question Frohike doesn’t need to ask, and heads to the unsurprisingly uninviting-looking bathroom, but not before returning Frohike’s firmly affirming kiss (from which his head is still spinning, pleasantly for once) with one of his own with much less tongue and intensity, but just as much certainty.

 

* * *

 

A shower might have sounded perfect, but Byers’ legs think otherwise, and threaten to give out on him the minute he’s started the water (which is, in fact, passably hot). The bathtub is small and cramped and heavenly after the past two days, the chaos that had started with a botched job—not their fault, he reminds himself, and not really even Yves; would you blame a mountain lion for snapping up the raw meat right in front of her? Fortunately, for him specifically, he reflects, having sharp teeth and a conscience aren’t mutually exclusive.

Then the phone call. The funeral. The totaled car, bloodstains on the carpet, his father’s hard hand flying at his face, the shock of Bertram being whole and alive, and the complete lack of surprise at everything else.

The plane. Langly on the other line, panic-breathing and begging Frohike to hurry, forgetting Byers could hear him and so desperate, so earnest, Byers had never wanted or needed to kiss him more, or been so helpless, flung through the air in a surely-doomed canister and further away from home by the second.

Byers stays in the hot water until it isn’t hot anymore, and his exhausted muscles have forgotten how to do anything but shake.

A soft knock jars him awake, from a half-dream he doesn’t even remember falling into: Langly choking on his words, on the phone, becoming a busy signal, becoming a plane’s whining engine, becoming—

“Byers?” He can practically hear the concerned furrow in Frohike’s brow. “You doing okay?”

“Yes,” he says automatically, and this time he knows he’s lying. Then, “no.”

A pause that can only be described as silently alarmed. “You need a hand, or…?”

“No, no, I’m… yes.” Byers rolls his eyes at himself even as he pushes the drain open with a foot that obeys him that far, but would never hold under something as demanding as standing up. It’s not the ‘yes’ that’s embarrassing, it’s how long it takes him to get there.

It’s not even embarrassing to have Frohike come in, shutting the door behind him, and find Byers only having managed to sit on the edge of the tub, not trusting his body or mind not to betray him if he tries anything more daring. It’s nothing Frohike, or Langly, hasn’t seen, at least what’s visible. There aren’t many surprises left after being together for twelve years, or boundaries, or questions, and Frohike doesn’t ask any now, just grabs a clean-at-least towel and wraps it around Byers’ shoulders

“Well, good. I was expecting a lot worse,” he says. “Y’know, you and almost drowning in motels…not the best history there.”

Byers tries to speak, and fails. Doesn’t know what he was trying to say; everything’s grayer now, number, the harsh fluorescent light is painful, and it’s easier to shut off his brain and wrap himself in the towel, even easier to set his feet on the floor and hold onto Frohike, who helps him rotate to sit on the closed toilet, and try to stay upright and breathing through the strongest wave of fatigue he’s ever struggled against. Much easier than it would be to stop struggling, though he’s long past knowing exactly what he’s trying to prove.

“It’s gonna take a while, isn’t it?” Frohike says, shaking Byers out of another borderline-dream, and likely not a good one.

“What?” Byers says, or something like it.

“Getting today behind you. And yesterday. Gonna take more than one shitty bath, isn’t it?” Byers doesn’t have the brain or energy to answer, but like always, he doesn’t really need to. Frohike gives him something between a smile and a grimace, then nods toward the bathroom door. “For us too. Him, definitely. The drive up here—I’m glad it’s over, and he’s talking again. But ask me if I feel the same way tomorrow. And that never leaves this room, we clear?”

There’s a faint laugh in Frohike’s voice, but not in his face, and it’s gone fast, leaving behind a haunted look Byers doesn’t remember seeing before, and never wants to again.

“I’m sorry,” Byers whispers, and these at least are words, which he means, with every exhausted cell.

“You’re sorry?” Frohike snorts, stepping around to stand behind Byers, warm hands on his shoulders. “Lemme ask you this, did that f—did your father say he was sorry, once? For any of this?”

Byers straightens the smallest, most painful bit. “Why would he say that?”

“I don’t know, for punching you in the face?”

“It was more of a slap than a punch…” Byers mutters, and Frohike’s hand starts to knead at the back of his neck.

“Yeah, because that’s so much better,” Frohike deadpans back, but in a dropping-the-pointless-point kind of way. “I’m gonna go way out on a limb here and say he didn’t. Instead he leaves you alone in an airport and drops out of your life again. And this is after getting you roped into all this to begin with.”

“It’s not like he asked for it to happen,” Byers says, but it’s a weak defense and he’s not sure he even believes himself anymore. “Honestly, the whole thing did start with his funeral.”

“Yeah, so you’d think he would’ve had the common decency to stay dead and leave us alone. Hey, what do you think they blasted off in that little rocket and scattered all around? Obviously not his ashes. You said he had some of our papers lying around, right? Newsprint burns pretty well. Which we should probably keep in mind the next time the heating bill’s due.

“I know you blame my father,” Byers says levelly.

“Damn skippy I do.”

“But I don’t. I don’t think I’m even angry at him. So you can go ahead and hate him for both of us. It’s not that I can’t see the things he’s done, the man he really is—he showed me his true colors twelve years ago when he decided he’d rather not know me if it came with knowing the two of you.”

“Yeah,” Frohike says darkly, but doesn’t comment further. “Told Langly about that, by the way. Shortly before he went all Hulk Hogan at that poor guy and his beard.

Frohike’s deflecting, Byers knows it, and Frohike knows he knows. Not engaging with the deepest hurt, trying to remind him of other things, that a world exists beyond Bertram Byers and assassination plots and planes.

“That’s fine,” Byers sighs. “I hope he doesn’t feel too guilty.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Frohike says with a smirk that’s fond as it is wry. “He’d have to actually be capable of shame.”

“My point is…” Byers says, shutting his eyes. The lighting in here is harsh, and pain throbs from his eyeballs around to his temples like the screws of a medieval torture device clamping down and squeezing out all rational thought. “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t have one. I’m just… tired.”

Byers lets out a soft groan and lets his head drop forward onto Frohike’s chest, shuddering as a warm hand strokes a slow circle across his back,low, comforting words vibrating through Frohike’s sternum and the side of his face until he feels less brittle, less like he’ll snap in half if he moves too fast or thinks the wrong thing. He’s not sure he has bones anymore, or a reason to stay awake, but he still has words to say.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, eyes closed and shoulders sagging under the strange, paradoxical weight of release. “Thank you for coming to get me. Thank you for getting Langly here too. And for just…this is the best end to the night I could have hoped for. I can’t believe I almost never got to see…”

He stops talking. Cold fear plunges into his stomach like someone’s stabbed him with a stiletto made of ice. When he speaks again it’s in a rush, words jumbled and confused.

“I thought it was over. I can’t believe it’s not. It feels like it should have, almost, maybe, I don’t know, I just thought we’d never… I thought I was—”

Byers cuts himself off again, but not because he wants to. His throat is too thick, suddenly too big for his skin, and he can hardly breathe, much less speak. He lets out a short, strangled noise and claps a hand over his mouth in horror. His trauma-battered body is about to expel the day’s terror in the form of a scream whether he wants it or not, a sob that he can’t hold back any more than he could stop the deluge from a breaking dam by standing in front of it and calmly reasoning ‘please, not now, not here in a strange bathroom, Langly just got to sleep, I can’t let him hear this, could we please just table the breakdown and—’

“Hang on, buddy.”

Without quite knowing how or where they’re going, just that Frohike is taking him there, Byers finds himself gently herded outside onto the dark motel landing, thankfully vacant and silent. There’s no one to see the two men stumble out of their room like they’re dazed, confused, or on some strong drugs, one of them still in nothing but a towel and clutching the other and gasping like his head’s about to slip underwater for the last time, and this is all, all he can do before he drowns and sinks into a darkness too deep for anyone to follow. There’s no one to hear the awful, broken sounds that rip themselves from Byers’ throat like wild things escaping of their own accord as much as the cries of a wounded animal. No one but Frohike, and that’s the way it needs to be. No one else needs to ask questions or learn how close the world came to changing forever, for the worse—and Langly doesn’t need any of this in his head. Let him sleep, let him escape. Let Byers fall apart at last and put the pieces back together bit by painful, exhausted bit, Frohike helping complete his cracked shell of functionality just by being here, holding him, existing.

Slowly, the intervals between each wracking sob grow, until they taper off completely and finally subside. Byers is still shaking, but he’ll probably be shaking for days yet. He can breathe, that’s the important part. He can breathe and he’s here in Frohike’s arms and Langly is asleep just inside and none of them have been taken from each other. When Frohike asks if he’s all right to go back inside, he still can’t speak right away, but he can nod and mean it, and take a careful step.

“How’d you do it all?” He asks as soon as he can, when there’s a coherent thought in his head that doesn’t result in panicked breakdown or gut-hollowing guilt.

“You’re gonna have to be more specific,” Frohike says as he opens their room door, with the patience of someone well used to gently steering a drunk loved one safely home. Which isn’t that far from reality, Byers concludes. Relief is a hell of an intoxicant. “Done a lot today.”

“That’s exactly my point. How’d you take care of us this whole time? You did everything. For both of us.” Byers almost apologizes again. Almost. Instead, he lowers himself down and drags himself into the bed next to Langly, who’s apparently been conscious enough to wiggle underneath the covers, but doesn’t let go of Frohike’s hand, a clear request for him to follow.

Frohike does let out a quiet laugh now, slightly rueful and self-aware, but entirely fond. “What else am I gonna do?”

“Get taken care of by us, for once.” Byers sighs, first with regret, then with contentment, as Langly immediately gravitates toward him, curling as close to him as possible. “Whenever we’re in any condition to. But I mean it, you can’t be all right either, not after all this. I don’t think anyone could.”

“Well, one of us has to be,” Frohike says plainly, and it’s not a judgement or a barb, just a simple, accurate statement. “That’s how it’s been for a while, right? One of us has a problem, the other two step in. Two of us fall to pieces, that’s harder to deal with, but as long as one of us keeps it together, we’ll stumble on through.”

Byers keeps his voice low as Langly’s face comes to rest against the back of his neck. It would be a kiss (maybe a nibble) if he was awake, but now Langly stills again, obviously comforted by familiar feelings and smells. “But when’s the last time the one holding everything together was anyone but you?”

“We’ll be home soon,” Frohike says, neatly sidestepping the subject and flicking the light off. As his eyes adjust to the dark, Byers can make out the familiar arm motion of removing suspenders, almost make out Frohike’s profile as he takes off his glasses. Something about that relaxes him a tiny degree more. “Tomorrow night if we’re lucky. Then, I’ll be golden. Scoot over.”

Byers does, as much as possible, which just means pressing closer against Langly’s thin chest, whose long arms wrap more securely around him. The bed isn’t made for three people but that’s never stopped them before, and even an uncomfortable, squashed sleep together is better than any alone on the floor, or two with one missing, at least tonight. Assuming they’d avoided the lethal alternative, there was never any other way this mess could end.

Byers can’t forget the worry in Frohike’s face, even if he can’t see it now in the dark, close as they are, or the way Langly’s hand curls around his wrist like he’s afraid of separation even in dreams, but he can’t stay conscious of this or anything else for another minute. He holds onto the sensation of cramped, sweaty, perfect belonging, and finally knows nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Good God this was over 4k. The next will probably be even longer. I give up. This emotional word-vomit is gonna do what it’s gonna do, I’m just here for the ride along with you. Hope it’s a fun one, that’s all.


End file.
